White Paper | May 11, 2010

White Paper: Mobile Data Collection For SAP® Warehouse Management

Source: BlueStar, Inc.

By BlueStar, Inc.

Companies that have deployed SAP® warehouse management (WM) software have come to rely on its flexibility and capabilities in managing increasingly complex and time-sensitive shipping, receiving and warehousing tasks. Extending the capabilities of SAP WM software to mobile workers increases the ability of managers to gather data and direct operations in a seamless and efficient manner.

Understanding the requirements and capabilities of mobile terminals in an SAP environment can help managers make the right decisions at the right time.

SAP offers multiple options for connecting RF-linked mobile terminals to the SAP mainframe: SAPConsole and WebSAPConsole, and now ITSMobile are the most common methods in use today. Each of these solutions is designed for within-the-four-walls applications and assumes an always-on RF link back to SAP R/3.

WebSAPConsole and ITSMobile provide a similar interface but maintain the SAPGUI look for mobile terminals running Windows CE or other graphics-capable operating systems.

These solutions are all shipped with SAP R/3, offering companies a single source of standards-based support for both text and graphical display terminals that are standards-based. Being standards-based, they provide vendor-independent support for a variety of RF devices.

SAP's ERP Warehouse Management functionality offers a number of "pre-configured" RF transactions that are accessible by SAPConsole, WebSAPConsole and ITSMobile. These transactions include the most common transactions and simplify the set-up and configuration of mobile terminals.

Since each application is different and pre-configured modules cannot be provided to cover every contingency, each option supports transaction development using SAP's standard Advance Business Application Programming (ABAP) and SAP Graphical User Interface (GUI). This provides a single source program for efficient testing and maintenance of programs and transactions on both mainframe and mobile terminals. It also allows testing of programs on desktop terminals before deployment to RF-linked terminals.

User-created transactions (or “dialog programs”) are linked to existing transaction codes and organized on a special RF menu that is created and maintained in the SAP configuration area (the “IMG”). The RF menu can contain both SAP's pre-configured as well as user-defined RF transactions.

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